Faith In A Foreign Land--Sunday, August 17, 2008

August 17, 2008 Year A

Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Reflections on the Readings

dennishankins@gmail.com

www.dennishankins.com

Theme:  Faith in a Foreign Land

The faith of the Canaanite woman demonstrates for us that humility is the way to God.

Upon hearing this Gospel, you may have walked away scratching your head.  Salvation history requires us to remember this from St. Paul concerning the Jews:  

They are Israelites, and to them belong the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and of their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ.  God who is over all be blessed for evermore.  Amen.  Romans 9:5

The mission of Jesus and the Church was first 'to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.'  Those outside of the covenants and the law were viewed as idolatrous.  Because of this widespread idolatrous worship, gentiles were described with contemptible words such as 'dogs and swine.'  In truth, most of us are the children of the gentiles.  We were born 'outside' of the promises and glory of Israel; that is the sonship and the glory.  St. Paul illuminates our understanding when he says:

Welcome one another, therefore, as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.  For I tell you that Christ became a servant to the circumscribed to show God's truthfulness, in order to confirm the promises to the patriarchs, and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy.  (Romans 15:7-9)

Jesus was a stone of stumbling to Israel.  Israel stumbled because they did not pursue the righteousness of the law through faith.  It was faith Jesus looked for.  Jesus had said to Israel, 'You believe in God, believe also in me.'  God incarnate, who feeds the multitudes and eats with publicans and sinners, was not how Israel had come to understand the purpose of the law, the covenants, the promises and their worship.  

Some outside like this Canaanite woman were stirred deeply and demonstrated great faith and humility.  The Centurion for example explained, "I am not worthy that you should come under my roof, but say the word only and my son shall be healed."  The unnamed woman cries out for mercy for her daughter tormented by a demon.  Jesus says it is not right to give the children's bread to the dogs, because it is not right to treat unbelievers as believers.  Not all have faith.  Many who claim to have faith in Jesus are not faithful.  Again, not all have faith.  

The gifts and promises of God are not ours because of who we are.  The sacraments of the Church are the gifts of God for the people of God.  We were once a people who were not a people who are now the people of God.  This inspires us to follow the path of the Canaanite woman to say with all humility, "It is true, I am not worthy, but feed me dear Lord, even if I must eat from under the table the crumbs that fall to me." 

If Jesus is special and as precious as we have been taught, then it is not the boldness of a haughty spirit that is appropriate.  What is acceptable and precious in the eyes of the Lord, is that boldness of humility that seeks not only for ourselves but for all, especially our families, the great Grace of God that drives away the demons and bestows the freedom that befits those who are called the children of God. 

As we worship in spirit and in truth, we come to the Table of the Lord in the way a bride seeks to present herself to her groom.  The Canaanite woman recognized that Jesus coming to her Gentile countryside was a special moment.  The Lord's disciples begged him, saying, "Send her away, for she is crying after us."  But Jesus answered, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel."  But she came and knelt before him, saying, "Lord, help me."    She presented herself in the way that not only spoke of her humility, but of our Lord's holiness.  When we open our hearts and our mouths to receive Jesus, it is a special moment as we 'partake of the divine nature' receiving into ourselves the living Lord.  This requires a measure of faith.  If this has become rote and routine, receive the host on your tongue like a child being fed by its mother.  This a demonstration of humility, surrender and trust.  

Each of us are in the end 'beggars who have found the bread, sent to tell the other beggars where we found the bread.'  It is not the Church that is fortunate to have us.  Rather we are the blessed ones who should not boast against the Olive tree.  The Israel of God is the Church, who by faith have been grafted into the stump of Jesse.  In the final analysis, we did not choose him, but he chose us that we might be gathered out of every kindred and tribe and nation under heaven.  This is the missionary mandate of the Church.  That all may be gathered into one family, and the great Kingdom of God be the desire of all nations.  Amen.

Let us pray:  Dear Jesus, You are the bread come down from heaven.  May I always lift up my heart to you.  It is a surrendered heart I want to give.  In whatever way or thought or attitude I show reluctance, draw me even closer, that I may know you as the one who gives himself for the life of the world.  Evermore be unto me the 'bread of life.'  Amen.

Beginning To Sink--Sunday, August 10, 2008 Year A

August 10, 2008, Year A

Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Reflections on the Readings

By Dennis Hankins

dennishankins@gmail.com

www.dennishankins.com

Theme:  Beginning to Sink

And the men marveled, saying, "What sort of man is this, that even winds and sea obey him." (Matthew 8:27)

This event in today's Gospel ends with the confession of the storm tossed disciples saying, "Truly you are the Son of God."  So the disciples amazement in Matthew 8:27 becomes worship and adoration in Matthew 14:33.  

Jesus not only calms the storms, but he walks in the midst of the storms.  It is more difficult to see Jesus in the middle of the storm tossed sea.  The disciples were horrified.  They cried out, "It's a ghost!"  Then from the midst of the storm that familiar voice says, "Be not afraid, I AM."  

As long as Peter kept his eyes on Jesus the sea beneath him was paved.  The moment he took note of the wind, he began to sink.  

We are admonished in scripture not to be tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine.  We begin to sink when we embrace thoughts and behavior or whatever else that is contrary to sound doctrine.  Many churches in my lifetime have voted to make many ancient truths of faith into some meaningless pablum.  It happens slowly at first.  An adjustment here and there and before you know it babies die in the womb, the invalid are starved and the elderly are neglected.  Keeping up with the times and being politically correct is the mission of those who are departing from the deposit of faith.  The frog in the pot helps us understand this.  At first the frog doesn't notice that the water he's in is starting to warm up.  Slowly the temperature increases, but still the frog is unaware of the impending danger of being boiled to death.  Finally the water begins to boil and the life of the frog is finally snuffed out.  

Neglecting the gift of salvation given at Baptism imperils the believer.  To keep from sinking we must discern the spirits that desire our allegiance.  Always we must live up to our baptism.  But alas some have departed from the faith having loved this present world.  Anything that gets between us and Jesus can become bigger than Jesus.  Take an inventory of your life and see if anything makes the Lord's day just another day in your week.  And let us consider how to stir one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encourage one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.  The common experience of the baptized is being baptized.  Worshipping together as the community of the baptized is the natural event of the baptized.  To be a Christmas and Easter only Christian is to neglect the great gift of God given you in Baptism.  It is to miss the weekly experience of the Eucharist and to miss growing in faith together with your brothers and sisters in Christ.  Christianity is more than just 'me and Jesus.'  We need each other and cannot be complete in Christ without one another.  Many are sinking and don't know they are drowning in a sea of good intentions and holy things but have never tasted for themselves that the Lord is good.

Jesus is not another truth.  He is the way, the truth and the life.  We will sink like a lead pellet if Jesus is only a good man among many.  Jesus Christ the same, yesterday, today and forever was the powerful affirmation of the early Church.  It was momentous to have been with Jesus.  Worshipping in the caves and dens of the earth early Christians tested every spirit.  Every spirit that did not confess that Jesus was come in the flesh from the Father by the Holy Spirit in the Womb of Mary was anti-Christ.  This was and is the faith of the Church.  Everything we believe as Christians about life and the life to come hinges on the incarnation.  Those who seek to accommodate the spirit of the age are sinking into a world of fear and unbelief.  There is nothing new about modern times.  Doubt and unbelief and resistance to the truth have existed since the Garden of Eden.  However, in these last days, God has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.  

Today let us be as docile to Jesus and his will as are the winds and waves.

Let us pray:  Holy Spirit assist me that I may ever keep my eyes on Jesus, the author and finisher of my faith.  Anoint my eyes to see the Lord in all of humanity.  Eating and drinking the body and blood of Jesus, make my faith strong so that I may say Amen with all that is within me.  And in the time of trial keep me from sinking into self preservation.  Make me a faithful witness of all that I have seen and heard, even Jesus.  Amen.

  

Jesus in the Desert--Sunday, August 3, 2008, Year A

August 3, 2008, Year A

Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Reflection on the Readings

By Dennis Hankins

dennishankins@gmail.com

www.dennishankins.com

Theme: Jesus in the Desert

When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, "This is a lonely place..."

Jesus comes to this desert place contemplating the death of John the Baptist, his own cousin and forerunner.  It is John who said of Jesus, "Behold the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world."  No doubt Jesus is meditating upon this as he comes to this place of aloneness with the Father.  

John himself was a man of the desert place.  The people came to the desert place to hear John's words.  Jesus often retreated to a place of quiet and seclusion.  To such a place the people came so they could be close to Jesus and hear his voice.    It is as the disciples said, a lonely place, a place of seclusion and solitude.  

Elijah fearing the rampage of Jezebel, sought a place of seclusion.  Elijah seeks the comfort and refuge of a cave at the mount of God in Horeb.  Here the Lord passes before him in dramatic ways.  First there was the strong wind, then an earthquake, and after this a fire.  However, the Lord was not in the wind or the earthquake nor the fire.  After the fire there was a 'still small voice,' a voice he recognized.  This voice 'stilled the winds and the waves.'  It is this voice that whispered away the fever of Peter's mother-in-law. The woman taken in adultery heard this voice say, "Neither do I condemn you, go and sin no more."  And it is this voice that said from the Cross, "Father forgive them for they know not what they do."  

In pursuing the lover of our souls, it is the distractions and temptations of this world we leave behind.  A double minded man is unstable in all of his ways.  A divided heart is broken, but not for God.  And the lust of the eye feeds the imagination with weird and awkward thoughts betraying the idea we are made in the image of God.  Retreating into the prayer closet brings the spiritual life of the Holy Trinity into our hearts, our heads and our homes.  Here is the place where we may contemplate what is good and perfect, the very will of God.  In this secret place the Lord will clothe us with the beauty of his holiness. 

In the desert place Jesus had compassion upon the people and healed their sick.  He will have compassion upon us too.  As we draw nearer to him, he will heal our sin sick heart.  The heart is deceptively wicked; only He who knows what is in the heart of man is able to restore it.  Through sacramental confession we meet the Christ who embraces a 'broken and contrite spirit.'  Falling into his loving arms, we learn that Jesus is not willing that any should perish.  

This story of the multiplication of the loaves is recounted in all four Gospels.  Like the miracle of the manna in the desert, here in this deserted place Jesus feeds the multitudes with five loaves and two fish.  Jesus desires to feed us too.  He feeds us today not with the loaves and fish but with the life of his own body and blood.  In Eucharistic actions, Jesus took, blessed, broke and gave the loaves to his disciples and the disciples gave them to the crowds.  Each Sunday we are called to separate ourselves from the mundane and unite ourselves with the mystery of the Eucharist.  As we partake of the body and blood of Jesus we become a new creation.  

Every altar throughout the Church is a microcosm of the desert, the place of seclusion and solitude.  In this place we find the sanctuary of his love, the place where he receives his beloved as a bride adorned for her husband.  In this place we hear again a loving and familiar voice saying, "Hearken diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in fatness.  Incline your ear, and come to me; hear, that your soul may live; and I will make with you an everlasting covenant."

Let us pray: Dear Jesus, ever call me to yourself.  May my soul find refuge in the secret place of the most high.  Abiding in the shadow of the Almighty do I find refuge and my soul rests in true solitude; here I embrace you in the sanctuary of your love.  Amen.  

The Strength of the Kingdom---Sunday, July 20, 2008

July 20, 2008 Year A

Sixteenth Sunday In Ordinary Time

Reflections on the Readings

By Dennis Hankins

dennishankins@gmail.com

www.dennishankins.com

Theme:  The Strength of the Kingdom 

  For the kingdom of God does not consist in talk but in power. (I Corinthians 4:20)

They say that dynamite comes in small packages.  A single stick of dynamite attached to something a thousand times its size will demonstrate its enormous power.  In today's climate of terror much has been said about smart bombs carried in something as inconspicuous as a suitcase.  A small brown bag or box left in a mall restroom prompts a call for bomb squads and an evacuation of the area.

At World Youth Day 2008, in Sydney, Australia His Holiness, Pope Benedict has just concluded a visit with the young people and the young in heart from every nation under heaven.  The theme for this event was You Shall Receive Power.   The Pope is asking us to open our hearts to the Holy Spirit for an interior transformation and renewal.  We can renew the face the earth, of our homes, of our communities if we will but receive the fire of his love.  The spiritual dryness of our hearts and Church will become again a land flowing with milk and honey if we will but receive the springs of living water.  It is the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of Life who will open to us the mystery of God's great Kingdom of powerful love.  It is today's Church which Pope Benedict is summoning to be prophets of a new Pentecost.     

Today's Gospel reminds us of the enormous strength and efficacy of the kingdom of heaven.  Jesus spoke to the crowds in parables.  Parables come in language that speaks with a clarity that is obscure to those who resist the message.  The example of the wheat and the weeds illustrates this.  Darnel plants resemble wheat in its early stages of growth.  Not until harvest can it be distinguished from the mature wheat.  This is why they must grow up together.  But the reality remains, resist the true kingdom and the furnace of fire awaits you.  

For us as for the disciples, the mystery of the kingdom is revealed in its indomitable power.  It is within the inner sanctum of our existence in which the seed of the Kingdom must take root.  Christians often feel incapable or insignificant facing the spirit of the age.  Perhaps now more than ever before we must embrace our faith in God even if its only the size of a mustard seed. Moses was rescued from a basket floating on the Nile River.  David faced Goliath with five smooth stones and a slingshot.  Samson routed the Philistines with the jaw bone of a donkey.  And by the same Holy Spirit that inspired these saints and countless others, the bread and wine on our altars becomes the Body and Blood of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.  They asked, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?"  For two millennia the Body of Christ has been saying, "Yes, come see a man."  "Taste and see that the Lord is good."

Only the Kingdom's unconquered power can create in us a clean heart.  Jeremiah the Prophet describes the heart as deceitful above all things, and desperately corrupt; who can understand it? (Jeremiah 17:9)  The words of the Psalmist cry out, "Direct thy steps to the perpetual ruins; the enemy has destroyed everything in the sanctuary!" (Psalm 74:3) Understanding more about the Kingdom of God is a matter of the heart because God looks on the heart.  Others see us on the outside, while God sees us from the inside out.  Within the domain of the heart originates what corrupts us.  It is there, deeply within the inner sanctuary of our heart Jesus seeks residence.  It is there where we have memory of a time when humankind visited with his maker without barriers; without shame.  Never imposing, Jesus proposes to our ache-filled hearts that there is a more excellent way; a way that has always been because God is.  Wooing us to himself, standing at the door of our heart he knocks.  Jesus says, "If any one hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him and he with me."  And what was once filled with dead and barren desires thrives again with a benevolent feast of love.  The transforming strength of the Kingdom is illustrated by the "leaven hidden in three measures of meal".  May we with St. Peter cry out, "Not my feet only, but also my hands and head!" 

Let us pray:  Dear Jesus take full possession of my being. And in my life Lord be glorified.  Through all of my days help me be a new creation, possessed of a higher power, the same power that raised you from the dead.  Quicken my mortal body with this power and fill me with the strength of the kingdom of heaven, so like you a bruised reed I will not break.  Amen.

I Will Give You Rest

July 6, 2008 Year A

Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Reflection on the Readings

By Dennis Hankins

dennishankins@gmail.com

www.dennishankins.com

Theme:  I Will Give You Rest

The crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes. (Matthew 7:28b-29)

Weakness often finds expression in a forcible way.  Jesus' authority arose from a heart filled with gentleness and humility.  

The Scribes and Pharisees delighted in being authoritarian. A greeting in the marketplace and the best seat at dinner is all that mattered.  Connecting the people to God did not matter.  In contrast to Jesus, they came among the people of God to be served.  Jesus on the other hand talked about life that withstood winds and waves, discipline that brings ease and refreshment to life, and demands that bring joy instead of burden.  Jesus came to serve, not to be served.

No wonder one of the best loved scriptures is Jesus saying, "Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest."  In the name and authority of Jesus the Apostles brought good news to the poor, cast out devils, made the lame to walk and the dead were brought back to life.  Meeting Jesus should be momentous.  The Jesus we give to the world is the Jesus who turned water into wine, gave the lepers new skin, and opened the eyes of the blind.  And the Jesus we worship is the Jesus who comes to us in the bread we eat and the wine we drink, the body and blood of the Lord.  

Unlike the Scribes and Pharisees, Jesus came among His own, revealing the Father.  His words and His works conveyed the message, 'there's someone I want you to meet.'   It is His desire that we should know the Father, since 'no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him.'  And it is us He has chosen. He said, "You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you."  Is there any greater consolation and rest than to know we are the focus of the Father's love through the Son of His love?  And the Holy Spirit brings this filial truth to us, that is, the love that unites the Holy Trinity to one another also includes us.  Within this Holy conclave of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is an eternal Sabbath rest.  Sabbath is the symbol of the Son, who when he had made purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high. (Hebrews 1:3)  Each Lord's Day we celebrate this victory and this rest of a heart sprinkled clean from an evil conscience. (Hebrews 10:22)

The Church that Jesus obtained by his own blood is the body of Christ.  If there is a haven of rest anywhere on this planet, it is the Church.  It is where Jesus is met in the Holy Sacraments of Baptism, Confession, and Eucharist.  Anything we can do to help people know that Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever is the motive of the 'new evangelization.'  We can be those who say like Jesus, 'there's someone I would like for you to meet.'  The Body of Christ is the incarnation of Jesus on this earth.  If the Church looks like Jesus, talks like Jesus, reaches out like Jesus, then the Church must be Jesus.  And the message of Jesus for over two thousand years is, "Come unto me…and I will give you rest."   Hallelujah!

Let us pray:  Dear Jesus, teach me the way of gentleness and humility.  Let me find your way for myself, let me show a better way for my family, let me witness to the only way to the Father through you who said, "I am gentle and lowly of heart."  Then shall my soul be at rest.  Amen. 

``O Holy Spirit, sent by the Father in the the Name of Jesus...Renew Thy Wonders in this our day, as by a new Pentecost!!''  Pope John XXIII